PANAMA CITY— The Historical Society of Bay County revealed a little-known side of a landmark Supreme Court decision.
Gideon V. Wainwright was a 1963 Supreme Court decision that mandated courts provide legal counsel to criminal defendants who cannot afford an attorney. It started in Bay County, with Clarence Earl Gideon allegedly breaking into and burglarizing a pool hall.
When Gideon went to court, he told the judge he needed an attorney to be appointed to him. The judge in the case informed Gideon that court-appointed counsel was reserved for capital offenses. He was convicted and ended up incarcerated in Raiford, Florida.
The popular story about what happened after his incarceration is that he became a self-taught jailhouse lawyer using resources at the facility’s law library. He would use the wealth of knowledge gained to write an appeal to the Supreme Court, which led to the decision in his favor. This made Gideon something of a folk hero, as an unemployed drifter with an eighth-grade education beating the American legal system.
Local historian Kenny Redd, at his April 27 presentation “Double Homicide and a Twist of Fate,” posits a history that somewhat contradicts the popular narrative.
Gideon found himself incarcerated at Raiford alongside disgraced former judge Joseph Peel Jr., who was also reportedly his cellmate.
Peel studied law at Stetson University and later became a judge in West Palm Beach. Reporting from the Palm Beach Post says Peel was involved in numbers games, essentially illegal gambling, and moonshine rackets. He would tip off bad actors when police raids were planned, and he knew in advance because he was the one signing the warrants.
Peel had been previously warned by Circuit judge Curtis E. Chillingworth for representing both sides of a divorce case. After Peel had told a client she was divorced, only to find out her new marriage wasn’t legal after having a child, he thought that Chillingworth was preparing to get him disbarred, according to the Post.
He was later sentenced to life in prison for paying two “thugs” $2,500 to kill Chillingworth and his wife. This is when he reportedly met Gideon in prison.
Bruce Jacob was the Florida assistant attorney general who argued against Gideon in the Supreme Court. According to Redd, Jacob joined Gideon’s attorney from his Bay County retrial, W. Fred Turner, at a symposium at the University of Florida in 2001.
At this symposium, Redd said Turner revealed that Peel was quite involved in the appeal that Gideon wrote for the Supreme Court.
In 2003, Jacob penned a law-review article that appeared to substantiate that theory.
“According to Turner, Peel, Gideon’s cellmate, stood over his shoulder as Gideon wrote and told him what to say,” Jacob wrote. “Peel was a murderer, but he had also been a lawyer.
“If Turner is right—that Peel helped Gideon with his petition—this might explain why no special circumstance was alleged,” Jacob wrote. “Even if Gideon was unaware of Betts at the time of the trial, he certainly knew about it after he entered the Florida State Penitentiary.”
Betts v. Brady was a Supreme Court ruling from 1942 that denied counsel to indigent defendants. Jacob argued that a lawyer like Peel would have understood that the Supreme Court was on the verge of overturning the ruling.
“Also, a lawyer would have been aware that Gideon lost nothing by ‘shooting for the moon’ in this attempt,” Jacob wrote. “If he failed, Gideon could file another petition in the circuit court in Starke, where the prison was located, or in the Florida Supreme Court, alleging a limited education, alcoholism, or some other special circumstance that would have entitled him to counsel.”
Peel was paroled from prison because of terminal cancer in 1982. He died 11 days after his release, apparently never publicly taking credit for the landmark decision.
Gideon died in 1972, and Turner followed in 2003. Jacob is 91 years old.
This article originally appeared on The News Herald: A local landmark Supreme Court case has a twist many don’t know about
Reporting by Dylan Gentile, Panama City News Herald / The News Herald
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